


and time came crashing down

by ThatOnePlatypus



Series: Stories at sea [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 23:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17990177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOnePlatypus/pseuds/ThatOnePlatypus
Summary: It starts when a baby named Obito is born. It starts two years later, when a ghost slips in a baby's crib. For many, it starts a year later, when the both of them officially meet.Or maybe- maybe it starts thirty years later, in a future that will never be.





	and time came crashing down

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone and their mothers have done a time travel story. This one came out of nowhere, but it's not going to become anything more than a short ficlet.  
> Even though I would love to, because I have yet to see a story where both Kakashi and Obito come back to fix things. But I've got too many wips to write it myself.  
> Enjoy!

It starts when a boy named Obito is born, wailing angrily at the world at large, as though to blame it for his predicament. He miraculously falls silent when his parents take him into their arms, staring at them with a gaze that is too intense, if not fully focused.

He looks like any Uchiha baby does, and his father manages to share a brittle smile with his wife. It seems her Senju genes didn’t win out in the end. Perhaps their son won’t be rejected as they feared he might be.

He’s not watching his son, and neither is Obito’s mother, and as such they miss the moment where the baby’s eyes turn a vivid crimson, staring at his parents as though hoping to burn the moment in his memory.

The nurse is the only one to see, but it’s gone so fast that she dismisses it as a trick of the light.

No Uchiha, not even the infamous Madara, was born with the sharingan active, after all.

 

It starts again two years later, when Obito slips soundlessly into a sleeping house in the dark of the night. His tiny, child form goes through solid walls as though he were just a ghost, or a mirage, his eyes a glowing red.

No one is there to notice the toddler climb much too gracefully on the crib that is in the room.

No one, except for the baby there, who opens his dark unfocused eyes and sniffs at the air curiously.

“Hey, Kashi,” Obito murmurs, leaning into the crib until he’s on the edge of falling in. There is _something_ on his childish face that is too intense, too emotional, to belong there. The baby stares at him in the dark, likely seeing only the glowing sharingan. “Kashi. Is that you, Kashi?”

No one is there to see the nod that the infant gives, an absurdly wary expression on it’s tiny face.

“Thank the gods,” Obito says, and whispers like it’s a confession, “I thought I was alone.” And then, head bowing as he curls into himself, still hanging over the edge of the crib. “I’m sorry, Kashi. Sorry. _So sorry_.”

No one hears his litany of apologies, whispered in the dead of night to the only person who might understand.

No one sees the tear drip on his cheeks.

No one sees Kakashi reach out with tiny hands to touch Obito’s face.

Even Sakumo sleeps, unaware that his son is reuniting, finally, with a long lost friend.

 

A year later, when Kakashi brings an Uchiha boy to his father, and announces that this is Obito, and he’s his best friend in the whole world. Sakumo smiles, and teasingly tells Obito to take care of his son.

“I’ll never let him down,” Obito replies, much too serious.

Sakumo blinks, taken aback, but before he can say anything, Kakashi is dragging his new friend away. Obito is smiling eagerly, his hand clasped tightly around Kakashi’s, as he lets the smaller boy lead him, a normal child.

Sakumo decides that he’s making something out of a child’s words – no doubt, he repeated something he heard and found cool – and promptly wonders if he can find Obito’s guardians to invite the boy for a play-date sometime.

Such a cute friendship – his son’s _first_ friend – should be encouraged.

Years later, many people will agree that this meeting between the two children was the real start of it all.

 

Or maybe it really starts more than thirty years later, in a future that was but might never be, when Kaguya’s rods plunge into both Kakashi and Obito’s stomach, the Kamui activating too late. The jutsu splutters, and goes awry, and suddenly both men, on the very edge of death phase out of reality-

                                                                                                        and time-

                                                                                                                                    comes crashing down.


End file.
